


Did you actually want me to do a dramatic pause?

by rsadelle



Category: Derry Girls (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Future Fic, Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Bad Place, Transformation, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rsadelle/pseuds/rsadelle
Summary: Five things that never happened to Sister Michael, plus one that did.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 145
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Did you actually want me to do a dramatic pause?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilyC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyC/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide LilyC! I had so much fun writing this for you, and I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> The title and section headers are quotes from Derry Girls, except for the one that's from The Good Place.

**1\. I do enjoy a good statue.**

"I'm not sure we should be doing this." That was that Clare Devlin's voice, which meant the rest of her group of friends would be with her.

Ah, God, as if Sister Michael's situation wasn't bad enough.

"Relax, Clare." And that was Michelle Mallon. "She's not even here. No one's seen her all day. Besides, I'm not going home without my magazines again."

"I think you mean _our_ magazines, Michelle," Clare said. "We all chipped in for those."

The wee English fella wandered into Sister Michael's eyeline and peered at her. "Was this statue always here?"

"Ah, fuck off, James," Michelle said. "You know the Sister likes statues."

There was rustling, and drawers opening and shutting. The utter cheek of them, going through her desk. There would be consequences for that. If she could ever move again.

"It kind of looks like her," the wee English fella said.

"Come on." That was Erin Quinn. "Even Sister Michael wouldn't have a statue that looks like her."

Erin appeared in Sister Michael's eyeline. She looked her up and down, and peered into her eyes in a most uncomfortable manner. The look on her face when she spoke again might have been funny if Sister Michael did not spend her days surrounded by teenage girls with no sense of proportion.

"My God, it does look like her."

Clare joined the other two in front of Sister Michael. "It does." She swayed from side to side. "It's like she's looking right at us no matter where we go."

Orla McCool stepped up behind Clare. For Christ's sake, didn't any of these girls go anywhere on their own?

"She could be in there right now, watching us."

The other three turned to look at Orla, and then back to Sister Michael.

"Do you think so?" Clare's voice and face showed increasing hysteria. "We can't be here!"

"If she is," Orla said, "she's already seen us."

"Why would she be hiding in a statue?" That was the wee English fella, of course.

"For fuck's sake, James, don't be a dick," Michelle said. She came across Sister Michael's eyeline for the first time, a pair of magazines clenched in her fist. "She's not hiding in a statue. Let's get out of here."

The five of them left Sister Michael's office in a loud flurry that ended with the door slamming shut. They were going to be in so much trouble when she was finally released from whatever curse had turned her into a statue.

**2\. This is the bad place.**

Sister Michael didn't think much of Michael the architect - she didn't particularly trust men in suits - but the house he'd led her to wasn't bad. It was small, but she didn't have to pay for it, and the closet was full of the kinds of clothes she'd spent her whole life wearing. Eternity looked like it was going to be a comfortable continuation of the good parts of her life, complete with judo lessons.

And then she was taken out to meet the other residents.

"It's so nice to meet you," the rich English girl said.

"I know," Sister Michael replied.

"I like you." The American blond threw an arm around Sister Michael's shoulders, and swiftly removed it when Sister Michael aimed her best _quelling students_ look at her.

The only one Sister Michael had even the slightest bit of appreciation for was the silent one, which made him better than any monk of the Catholic persuasion she'd ever met.

And then the very worst thing happened.

"Don't be such a deck, James." A pause. "Deck. _Deck_. Fork, why can't I say what I want?" Michelle Mallon and the wee English fella were there.

"It's the Good Place, Michelle." Clare Devlin too, and concerned with the rules as always. "Of course you can't swear."

"I don't see why not," Michelle said. "Shouldn't the Good Place be a place where I can do all the things I loved?"

"I don't think it works that way." Erin Quinn. God, would this nightmare never end?

"I think it's cracker." And that was Orla McCool. All five of them, right here with her.

"You know the girls, and James, of course," Michael said to Sister Michael. The teenagers turned to look at her with varying degrees of horror.

"Unfortunately," Sister Michael agreed. She nodded at the teenagers. "Ladies."

"Oh," the indecisive nerdy fella said. "Were you their teacher?" He gestured between himself and Sister Michael. "We're both educators then."

Sister Michael looked him up and down. "No."

He looked taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"Girls and Sister Michael, and James, of course," Michael said, "if you'll follow me, I have one more thing to show you."

The moment the building came into view, a horrifyingly pastel version of the school Sister Michael had spent far too many years overseeing, all of Sister Michael's terrible suspicions came together in one undeniable conclusion.

"For fork's sake," she said. "This is the bad place."

**3\. Keep it moving; Rawhide is on in fifteen minutes.**

There were a lot of theories about what made the names appear. In Sister Michael's opinion, what really mattered was that it was a terrible idea that had sown chaos in the world.

Hers was hardly a problem. Hers was hardly unexpected. Hers was over her heart, letters so elaborate they could have come from the Book of Kells spelling out GOD. She'd rolled her eyes when she'd first seen it, then turned them up toward the heavens and said, "You just had to do it that way, didn't you?"

It was her having to head up a school full of girls and one wee English fella while they kicked up a fuss about the names that had appeared on their skin that was a problem.

"Ladies," Sister Michael snapped.

The five students in front of her stopped their squabbling and fell into welcome silence.

Their parents arrived in the usual three groups: first the Quinns, complete with that father of Mary's and the baby, along with Orla McCool's mother; then Clare Devlin's mother; and lastly Deirdre Mallon looking just as pleased to be pulled away from her job as Sister Michael was to be having this meeting.

"Now," Sister Michael said once everyone was seated, "it seems we have a problem."

The parents turned to their daughters, except for Sarah McCool, who said, "I think we have a lot of problems. I mean, am I supposed to keep my hair up so the name is visible, or do I keep it down until I meet the right person?"

"Not the time, Sarah," Mary Quinn said.

"I think your hair looks cracker either way, mammy," Orla said. With her uniform violations - tie untied and shirt collar unbuttoned - the large, blocky letters spelling out her own name across her clavicle were visible.

Sarah put one hand up and touched her hair. "Thank you, love."

"It wasn't my idea," Clare Devlin burst out. "It was Michelle." She pointed at Michelle Mallon.

"Oh, as if you weren't right in it with us," Michelle said.

"We wouldn't have gone that far if you hadn't pushed us," Erin said with all the sulky indulgence of a fifteen-year-old.

"I think we were all quite invested in it," the wee English fella said.

"Don't be such a dick, James!" Michelle again.

Sister Michael clapped her hands. "Girls!"

The teenagers subsided into silence again. If only they would stay that way. This job was much easier before all this bother about the names.

**4\. Please, please do not come crying to me.**

"Oh for feck's sake," Sister Michael muttered under her breath. She'd gone out at a specific time of day to avoid precisely the situation she was about to encounter.

The teenagers ground to a halt in front of her.

"Sister Michael," Erin Quinn said. The other teenagers gathered behind her.

"Is that a baby?" Clare Devlin asked on the edge of hysteria. "Do you have a baby?"

"Is it real?" Orla McCool leaned over the baby and reached out with a finger to poke at her.

"Miss McCool!" Sister Michael snapped before Orla could make contact.

Just as Orla pulled her hand back, the next worst thing happened: the baby woke up and started crying.

"Oh for feck's sake," Sister Michael muttered again.

"You have a baby," the wee English fella said. "You have a baby."

"Ah, it's just a wain, James," Michelle Mallon said. "Stop acting like you've never seen one before."

"I didn't know nuns could have babies," Orla said. She was leaning over the baby again.

"Actually, you know, I don't think they can," Clare said. "It's sort of one of the requirements."

Erin picked up the baby, which stopped crying for her, for feck's sake. "I think what we mean, Sister, is that we're all a bit curious as to how you came to have a baby."

Sister Michael was generally uninclined to explain herself to those such as them, but prolonging the encounter seemed worth it if the baby remained quiet. "Yes, well, you see she was left at the school." In full truth, Sister Michael had been in her office, turned her back for two seconds, and turned back to find the baby there and her door still fully closed. "The authorities in their wisdom thought it best to leave her with me for the time being."

"We were on our way to Erin's for tea," Clare said. "You could join us, Sister Michael."

Michelle made a frustrated noise and clenched her fist.

The teenagers turned into a huddle and engaged in a debate as if they thought Sister Michael couldn't hear them.

Michelle was overruled, and when they turned around, Orla was holding the baby. That was nearly as alarming as anything else about the situation.

"Yes," Erin said, looking uncertain and somewhat disbelieving that she was saying it, "come for tea. My family will be glad to see you."

Anyone would be glad to see her, of course, but what really decided it was that the baby was as calm and quiet in Orla's arms as she had been in Erin's.

**5\. You might want to think about wising up.**

The wings were inconvenient. Sister Michael had no faith that they wouldn't go away as suddenly as they'd appeared, and as such, she saw no reason to permanently alter her clothing to accommodate them. It made getting dressed in the morning more difficult than it should be. Then there was the way they changed her balance, which was easy enough to deal with most of the time and trouble during her judo classes.

And then there was the fact that not everyone had got wings when they'd appeared. There were any number of theories about what tied the people who got them did and others didn't; Sister Michael couldn't imagine any way in which she was similar enough to Orla McCool and the wee English fella that there was any pattern to it.

"And finally," she said from her place on the stage in front of the school for morning assembly, "though I can't believe I have to tell you this, there will be no attempts to fly on school grounds. As you all know, the wings are not strong enough to support the weight of a person. There will be no injuries on my watch. Let us pray."

The girls dutifully crossed themselves and got on with it.

That should have been the end of it, but the girls lived to make Sister Michael's life difficult, and so it was that she walked past a classroom where Orla and the wee English fella were standing on top of desks with Erin Quinn, Michelle Mallon, and Clare Devlin standing around them.

"You know, I don't think this is such a good idea," Clare said. "Sister Michael specifically said-"

"Oh, Sister Michael said," Michelle said in a whiny imitation of Clare's voice. "Come off it Clare. This has to work."

"You know, I'm not so sure it will," the wee English fella said. "I really don't want to break something, Michelle."

"You're not going to break anything," Erin said. "You're not even that high off the ground."

"Come on, James, it's going to be cracker," Orla said.

"Ladies," Sister Michael snapped, stepping in before they could do whatever it was they were thinking about doing.

They all turned to look at her, with varying degrees of horror at being caught out.

"You two," Sister Michael gestured at Orla and the wee English fella, "step down from there. I'll be calling all of your parents."

"It wasn't me!" Clare pointed at Michelle. "It was all Michelle's idea!"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Michelle said.

Sister Michael crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the lot of them, which worked to make them all fall into line and follow her to her office to wait on the bench outside. The wings were almost as much trouble as the girls themselves.

**+1 Did I not ban this one?**

The camera crew arrived early. Sister Michael would have preferred that they not arrive at all, but in this, as in many things in her tenure as the head of the school, she had been overruled.

"We just want to get a feel for the place," an overly smiling American woman told her. "See where the best light is, where we should put everyone."

"Anywhere other than the school," Sister Michael suggested.

The American woman's smile faltered briefly. "We'll just take a look around."

Sister Michael had a disciplinary issue to attend to; when she caught up with the camera crew, they had already started filming. Erin Quinn was walking down a hallway with another overly smiling American woman, talking to the camera as much as to the woman.

"This was my school," Erin said. "I had so many good times here."

"No you didn't," Clare Devlin said from behind one of the cameramen.

"Yeah, come off it, Erin. You can't pretend these were the best days of our lives." Ah, God, Michelle Mallon was there too.

"You know, Michelle, I think people can remember things differently." The wee English fella, of course, and holding a baby.

"Fuck off, James."

"Don't tell me to fuck off," the wee English fella said at the same time Erin said, "Don't tell him to fuck off while he's holding the baby."

"When is he not holding the baby?" Michelle said. "What with you off having a career and leaving her with him all the time."

"She is actually my daughter too, you know," the wee English fella said.

Christ, another generation of Quinns. As if having the younger Quinn girl in the school wasn't trouble enough. With any luck, Sister Michael would have retired to a quiet convent without any teenagers by the time this one was old enough to attend the college. Not that Sister Michael had ever had that sort of luck.

"I think it's great that James does so much around the house." Orla McCool, at least, was an expected presence, given that Sister Michael had had a momentary lapse in judgement a few years back and hired her to teach PE.

"You would," Michelle said, "since you seem to think you live there."

"I have my own room," Orla said.

"That's the nursery!" Erin protested.

"Then why doesn't it have any plants in it?"

"I think we should all just calm down," Clare said. "This is supposed to be Erin's interview."

"Yes, thank you, Clare." Erin tossed her hair and turned to the American woman. "Where were we?"

"I think we've got most of what we need," the woman said.

Sister Michael took great pleasure in the way Erin's face fell.

"If we could just talk to you," the woman said. "Sister Michael, was it?"

Christ. As if it things weren't bad enough already.


End file.
